This generation is perhaps the most health conscious generation in history. Many infectious diseases have been all but eradicated by medical science. Most adults have been exposed to at least one general science course in school. Being aware of the necessity for sanitation and cleanliness, most adults wash their hands before they eat, properly cook their food, and avoid exposure of food to microorganisms. Unfortunately, when preparing to go to the beach, the typical cooler provides no sanitary way to bring both home prepared beverages such as Koolaid.RTM. or ice-tea and canned or bottled drinks to the beach. Typically the cooler is nearly filled with a home made beverage, ice cubes are added, and beverage cans or bottles are placed directly in the home made beverage. When, at the beach, one wishes to retrieve a canned or bottled drink from the cooler, one would remove the cooler's lid, reach in and retrieve a can or bottle with one's unwashed but hopefully not too dirty hand, thus possibly contaminating the home-made beverage surrounding the cans of canned drink. In addition, the mere removal of the cooler's lid exposes the homed-made beverage therein to possible contamination from dust, insects, etc. Furthermore, the removal of the cooler's lid allows warm air from the environment to enter thus shortening the length of time that the home-made beverage will stay cold. Hitherto, the only way to avoid this problem has been to bring one cooler for the home-made beverage and another cooler for canned drinks. Furthermore, the addition of ice cubes directly to the home-made beverage, results in eventual dilution of the home-made beverage.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a cooler which keeps a home-made beverage separate from both the ice cubes used for cooling and from any canned drinks it was also desired to bring along. It would be advantageous if the ice cubes were also kept separate from the cans of drink, so that they would not interfere with the retrieval of a can of drink, and would not make the cans wet and slippery to the touch. In addition, there is also a need for retrofitting or modifying existing coolers with means which would ensure that a home-made beverage was kept separate from any canned drinks it was also desired to bring along.